


Roads close (for paths to open)

by With_Malicious_Intent



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7721440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/With_Malicious_Intent/pseuds/With_Malicious_Intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>D’Artagnan will never be used to hearing the word, goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roads close (for paths to open)

**Author's Note:**

> The song Head Over Your Heart by Mat Kearny was a big inspiration for this piece, though I think I may do more fics based off this song...

D’Artagnan will never be used to hearing the word, goodbye.

Not at the time his adopted mother was dying of brain cancer, neither when his father died in his arms when a bullet to the chest took him away, and even more so when Porthos, his confidant, his older brother, had left for Afghanistan. They were all tallies on d’Artagnan’s internal chalkboard, of the people he hurt and those that he couldn’t save.

Seeing the future wasn’t easy to bare at times, and funny enough people actually wish for this, to predict the unpredictable. When it all started, at the orphanage and barely reaching the age of six, he thought he was cursed. Cursed to see everyone he knew and loved die, it was worse than living. He’s been to enough funerals.

Goodbyes have become second nature, yet it doesn’t change the fact that his heart tears a little each time. I love you was like adding salt to the wound. So he’s settled with saying thank you, thank you for everything.

But this had to be the worst thank you he’s ever given.

His husband was going to die. He was going to die protecting him.

Despite all the years d’Artagnan had with his burden, he still tries changing fate yet he’s learned that fate doesn’t change for anybody, not even for the seer.

He had another vision, whilst laying in Athos’ arms on their queen sized bed of their cramped apartment, drifting off to the sound of New York traffic, this vision told him instantly that if he didn’t die that day, he would die on the narrow steps he’s always feared going down, in the hallway of their unit. By the time of the third vision, where he would get caught inside a bus that was going to erupt into flames because a leak in the engine, he knew that this was his death sentence. Death was coming to take him no matter what he did to prevent it.

He considers this bittersweet, the bitter part was that he barely begun to get his life started, he was going to open his dream restaurant in the center of Times Square, he and Athos were going to have a chance to be happy, they were going to settle down, have a life…they had plans. D’Artagnan had unfinished business.

But the sweetness of the cavity was that Athos was going to do better things, things that he couldn’t accomplish with d’Artagnan by his side, perhaps it could have caused to much heatbreak that either would save the other from. D’Artagnan just guesses that fate weighed their lives and Athos won, going off to humanitarian work which would therefore lead other desperate lives into the fuller destiny was better than owning a five star restaurant in Times Square.

D’Artagnan often wrote his thoughts in a diary, and in this diary held many things, many things he cared about and things that he’s enjoyed throughout his twenty-four years of life. So far he’s finished four journals, and he’s coming upon to finishing his fifth, his last one.

The earliest thing he wrote, on page one, was of a story that his adopted mother had told him one day when d’Artagnan and Porthos ended up fighting and not speaking to each other for hours. The story of how a gazelle protected the lion.

An old gazelle was on its way to a river for some well-earned water after its long journey, and the watering hole it came upon was shared by all animals who considered that river to be a land of truce. No animal had to fear of being dinner because they all needed access to the river to keep the flow of life rotating. But a pair of hunters didn’t know of this truce, and so they did what poachers do, they poached. Yet the old gazelle knew of the hunters’ presence, and with its weary bones warned the animals who had gathered for a drink and whilst they all were trying to flee, there was a cloud of dust. But when the dust cleared, the old gazelle noticed a young lion cub wandering around beside the riverbed, wondering why everyone was running away.

By the looks of the cub, it may have only been a few days old, barely able to keep up with its pride. The old gazelle took pity on the young fussing cub, and took his old weary self to stand in front of the babe. Gazelles had long horns on the top of their heads, of course those old things came in handy when need be, but the old gazelle knew horns held no power against guns, for he has been around a long time to know nothing can come in front of the path of a gun and survive.

He saw the poachers coming closer, and he quickly tried nudging the small cub towards the river, in hopes that its natural instincts will be able to make him swim but the courageous yet foolish little lion wanted to play rather than do what the gazelle told him to do. The gazelle realized when it heard the footsteps approaching that there was only one way that this situation would turn out well for the cub.

If it sacrificed itself.

The decision was silly of course, it was going to put its own life on the line for a young predator, who will perhaps grow up to kill his kind. The gazelle didn’t know the lion personally, it didn’t know what that lion will grow up to be, yet that didn’t matter to the gazelle. If it weighed its life to this lion’s on a scale, the cub would be on the high end, but to make it simple, the gazelle was older, closer to its end, and this lion had a life of many adventures, like the old gazelle experienced, ahead of it.

So as the hunters loaded their rifles, the gazelle pushed the lion into the water and fell to the ground when it was shot down and taken to be mounted. The lion was safe, yet the gazelle was dead.

A strange tale indeed, it had no significance, and there didn’t really seem to be a moral, it was as if she just said it to put him a worse mood. Though she said that the reason she told him that fable was because the gazelle knew when to pick and choose its battles, and it had the courage to put its own self aside for the benefits of others, even if it meant the cost of its life.

So, that day, as d’Artagnan and Athos were going home after dinner with a friend, he decided to be that gazelle. Their robber went by the name of Wayne Morrow, a man who was desperate for cash to save enough money for his daughter’s open heart surgery. D’Artagnan had taken it upon himself to send an unexpected package to Morrow’s house for the week after, hopefully enough to give his daughter the surgery she so direly needed.

It was a hard decision, yet there was no other way for Athos to come out of that situation alive, and not taking the shortcut through that alley would only have someone else killed. Sadly, there was also no solution to stop Wayne from accidentally pulling that trigger.

It was courage that made d’Artagnan push Athos out of range when his husband dove forward, and it was gratitude that helped him look Athos in the eyes, tears streaming down his lover’s face as their attacker ran down the block.

“No d’Artagnan, no. Don’t leave me, please.” Athos whispered, shakily stroking d’Artagnan’s hair, pressing his favorite scarf on d’Artagnan’s wound. “Why did you let us take the shortcut?”

“Every reaction has a chain reaction.” D’Artagnan answered. This goodbye burned, it made every cell in his body scream, and it made him almost regret it. But d’Artagnan knew that it was inevitable, that there was nothing he could do to change this, and so he hopes that Athos won’t hate him forever. “Thank you…thank you for everything you are to me.”

Athos wouldn’t be able to move on from this, he’s seen it. But Athos was every cure to every nightmare, every vision, and every damn thing in his miserable existence, he just prays that he’s given Athos everything that he gave to him and that it was enough.

He was his husband’s savior for once, and it made his last breath easier to take.

The next day, as Athos shuffles into their now lifeless apartment, still in his bloody clothes from that dreadful night, he finds a note in their window frame, addressed to him in d’Artagnan’s scrawly handwriting. It takes him a week to muster the strength to read it, a week full of pushing police officers out of his apartment and refusing to pick up Aramis’ calls.

After that week, Wayne Morrow received his mysterious package, his eyes blood shot and his frame heavy, yet this package changes everything. It’s the closest he comes to happiness in years and he wants to shout on the rooftops, but instead he breaks down and cries by his daughter’s bed side, monitors surrounding her in replace of her bed frame, clutching her little hand, her finger clipped to a heart monitor.

Athos learns to accept this, and just lightly, though with Aramis’ council, he doesn’t do anything harsh. He lays the flowers at d’Artagnan’s grave stone, which is next to Porthos’, who is buried with his purple heart. He makes sure that Porthos isn’t forgotten, and lays a fresh bouquet on the grown grass.

That night Aramis stayed with Athos beside d’Artagnan’s grave, wiped away the tears, helped repair a heart that will never see the light of day again, forever shrouded by the cloud of pain and anguish.

It take Athos six months to read d’Artagnan’s journals, when he’s packing away d’Artagnan’s things to put them in storage. This is after he made the decision to pack little of his belonging to go away, to travel, to see the world. To live for d’Artagnan.

He read from the shaky beginning to the more firm ends, and he’s smiling at the last page of the fifth journal, the last page dedicated to him.

“That night I made the decision for the both of us, and for many others. So much would be lost if you died in that alley Athos, and there was no way you could have saved me, no matter how much you're thinking of the what ifs. You’re my best friend, my lover, and the mender of my heart, I share everything with you yet you must understand why I couldn’t tell you what would happen that day. A little girl will live to have a future I never could have, and so many others will be able to as well because of my choice. I decided to be the gazelle for the first time in my life, and I’d make the leap every time, if it was for greater good. Just don’t hate me, and live the life I’ve seen what was meant for you and not for granted. Move on, knowing I have and I’m at peace, just never forget that I love you, that I’ll always love you. **_Thank you_**.”

Athos takes one look back at the memories of their life, which was now away in boxes, and the empty apartment now looks bigger than it did before, _much_ bigger. He shuts the door with a click and turn of a key, with d’Artagnan’s journals, his memory, tucked safely away in his backpack, but not so far away from his heart.


End file.
